Dyslexia
B. UNDERSTANDING THE AREA OF SPECIAL NEEDS/DISABILITY*
1. The nature of area of special needs/ disability
2. Causes of disability (if any)
Neuroimaging
Modern neuroimaging techniques such as functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and Positron Emission Tomography (PET) have produced clear evidence of structural differences in the brains of children with reading difficulties. It has been found that people with dyslexia have a deficit in parts of the left hemisphere of the brain involved in reading, which includes the inferior frontal gyrus, inferior parietal lobule, and middle and ventral temporal cortex. (Cao F, Bitan T, Chou TL, Burman DD, Booth JR (October 2006). "Deficient orthographic and phonological representations in children with dyslexia revealed by brain activation patterns". Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, and Allied Disciplines 47 (10): 1041–50. doi:10.1111/j.1469-7610.2006.01684.x. ISSN 0021-9630. PMID 17073983.)
Genetic studies
Several candidate genes have been identified, including at the two regions first related to dyslexia: DCDC2[6] and KIAA0319,[7] on chromosome 6[8] and DYX1C1 on chromosome 15.
6)Heng H, Smith SD, Hager K, et al. (November 2005). "DCDC2 is associated with reading disability and modulates neuronal development in the brain". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 102 (47): 17053–8. doi:10.1073/pnas.0508591102. PMID 16278297.
7)Paracchini S, Steer CD, Buckingham LL, et al. (December 2008). "Association of the KIAA0319 dyslexia susceptibility gene with reading skills in the general population". The American Journal of Psychiatry 165 (12): 1576–84. doi:10.1176/appi.ajp.2008.07121872. PMID 18829873.
8)Grigorenko EL, Wood FB, Meyer MS, Pauls DL (February 2000). "Chromosome 6p influences on different dyslexia-related cognitive processes: further confirmation". American Journal of Human Genetics 66 (2): 715–23. doi:10.1086/302755. PMID 10677331.
3. The general impact of the special need or disability on a student in terms of development and learning
The short- and long-term consequences (in terms of development and learning) for dyslexic students and what we (teachers) can do to help.